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Richard Wolstencroft’s relationship to holocaust denial and Nazis

(Update: Richard Wolstencroft stepped down from the Melbourne Underground Film Festival with a somewhat hollow apology. He’s still making a film about a Nazi and is listed as Contributing Editor for Alternative Rightblog.)

Richard Wolstencroft, the director of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, has recently ended up in hot water over a post he made after the marriage equality survey result were announced. It wasn’t so much what he said, he has peddled all kinds of bad takes (such as blaming the shooting at Las Vegas on Soros a favourite anti-semitic trope of the right such as Alex Jones) but the timing of his diatribe.

It was the moment when the majority of the community were celebrating winning the vote in favour to legalise same sex marriage. He called that moment a “Black day.”

The post itself was not only homophobic but was also has a suggestion of anti-semitism by conflating the win as an attack from “Globalists”, another key talking point from Alex Jones and others. The phrase Globalists can be used as a dog whistle:

The term “globalist” has also been used as an anti-Semitic dog whistle and echoes pernicious anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.

A quote from a site written by a holocaust denier that Wolstencroft is Contributing Editor for uses globalist in this way:

Our ideas matter now because we, White American dissidents of every stripe, can finally be heard over the globalist media oligarchs who’ve been silencing us for decades.

The reaction from the marriage equality post was swift and Wolstencroft seemed to enjoy it “With all this publicity Muff will be packed next year – lol”. The “Slack Bastard” has a good summary.

I previously wrote about his position on other issues and penchant for getting attention after writing about him playing the anti-vaxx film ‘Vaxxed’ so thought I’d put the bits together here for convenience and look at his relationship to anti-semitism and holocaust denial. This is important because anti-semitism is on the rise with 10% increase in acts of anti-semitism according to the New York Times and other reports Trump is becoming a magnet for anti-Semitism in Australia and the threat that the alt-right could turn violent – Will the Alt Right Produce the Next Timothy McVeigh?

Here’s Wolstencroft’s post:

A Black day. The Decadence and Degeneracy of the Bourgeois Elite has been normalized and they will use this to destroy us. The Family and The Nation will be under direct attack. Homosexuality is created often through child abuse and it has been embraced by the Majority of Australians as normal. The Australian public really was fooled, bullied and cajoled in to this decision ruthlessly by the Government and Media Elite. I would also suspect some vote rigging The Elite who wish to advance this abusive and destructive agenda. This is the beginning of the End of our Great Country. – unless we fight back. This is a horrible black day of infamy. The Gay Community have allowed their politics to be weaponized by the Globalists. A Tragedy.

Alt Right/Neo Nazis

Wolstencroft is a self described Trump supporter/alt righter. He fashions himself as an “Australian Milo Yiannoppoulos” (his words) who himself has a Nazi problem, filmed singing to Richard Spencer and co giving Nazi salutes (Spencer was the one who famously got punched in the face while doing an interview mid-sentence describing his Pepe lapel).

It’s fair to say that I’m the Australian Milo Yiannoppoulos

Here he is at the Milo gig in Melbourne (he looks a bit sad that he’s not recognised):

Listen to him squirm and his mate is a complete tosser. Fascist sympathiser, Trump supporter and #Milo fanboy. Richard Wolstencroft; Director of Melbourne Underground Film Festival.#fuckmilopic.twitter.com/MVDqYwoInX

I think the Alt Right movement can go more Populist and expand it’s raech. We have to retake Europe with Right Wing Populists, begin deportations to save Europe from this recent threat and carve out the new geo political picture in ideologically and mythic terms beyond the ken of the Globalist agenda and based around the idea of a New Axis – the solidity of a Russia and United States alliance.

He also hangs out with Q Society (told in a story on the “Star Chamber”, a budget talk show, beside Richard Lowenstein (?!) and David Thrussell). The Q society is a far right group with links to Christian fundamentalist in the US.

Colin Liddell, who was a prime blogger for AlternativeRight.com that was created by Richard Spencer, was known for his controversial articles. This included ones that questioned the history of the Holocaust, as well as bluntly put his belief that black people were barely better than animals. While Spencer was still the editor of the website, he published an article by Liddell called “Is Black Genocide Right?”

Colin Liddell wrote a piece that was coveredby Rachel Maddow. In it Liddell writes about the holocaust saying “Leaving aside the question of whether it actually happened” and ” supposed historical event”. The piece is celebrated every year on the Alternative Right blog since it was published 27th January 2013. The date is chosen because Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated on 27th of January and the is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Wolstencroft is happy to be associated with the Alt Right site edited by Colin Liddell, a holocaust denier, with both his writing and on the sites podcast.

Here’s some takes:

THE HYMAN ROTH “ALLIANCE”: IS THE DONALD GOING FULL GODFATHER II?

But many in the Alt Right go a lot further. They have started to see a different Donald, one who is cucked and in the pocket of the Globalists, and may soon deserve the echoing parenthesis around (((his own name))).

Trump is gonna bring some people “very close” to him over the next few years—before showing them the true nature of the deal. Sometimes by sticking the knife in when least expected. This will be well worth the wait, I assure you. And remember at the end of The Godfather Part II Hyman Roth [a jewish character that he uses as an analogy for todays “Globalists” and refers to Kushner, who is also jewish as an “insider family traitor”] ends up dead.

THE DONALD AS DON

Many, even Left and Liberal members of the Jewish Community, will (eventually) warm to him…

So, an important lesson is there to be learned by all from Godfather II, as we all remember how Hyman Roth ended up [dead].

But Trump has to be clever and to negotiate; he has to trick at times and cajole many of his enemies. Trump can truly be a saviour of Western Civilisation, which has been the hope of much of The Alt Right – and let’s hope he can pull it off.

THE NEW PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA — PAULINE HANSON

Who knows, maybe Pauline Hanson for Prime Minister is a dream not that far off, after all.

GET TRUMP!

Soros, sensing danger, “released the hounds” on the Chicago Rally, which had to be cancelled in a rather speculator way.

When we got there, our cab driver was some Arab scumbag. Then we got caught in a demonstration on the way to the hotel. A rowdy crowd of ungrateful immigrants were waving a flag that I did not recognise. I asked the imbecile at the wheel “What flag is that?

EYE FROM THE RIGHT: “HAIL, CAESAR!” BY THE COEN BROTHERS

Marcuse and the other Communists are ridiculed in an even more vicious way than the Anglo-Saxon Hollywood establishment. This is the main redeeming feature of the film, and is the main reason to see it. It should certainly get a few chuckles from the Alt-Right cognoscenti. Clearly the Coens are right-wing Jews – and that fits in with their other work, if you think about it.

The left wing Jews in Hail, Caesar! are shown to be naive, useless, ineffectual, delusional, malicious, and outright criminal in their intentions – not a million miles from Bernie Sanders, really LOL.

These quotes show a fixation on jews. Something that the alt-right ala neo-nazis display (think the tiki torch brigade chanting “Jews will not replace us”.

Recurring Nazi Themes in art and enterprises

Wolstencroft has made other comments defending and being an apologist for the Nazis:

The Nazis only wanted a united Europe like the EU…Hitler would have protected the British Empire and it would exist in a greater glory to this day if he had been allowed to”

Wolsentcroft revels in the media attention. He said after the attention he received from the Nazi themed night, at his nightclub, the Hellfire Club, that he “deliberately” does provocative things because in his words “I love causing controversy”:

What ever I do I’m a provocateur, I love it when people hate what I do sometimes, I deliberately do it, I love causing controversy, I love being hated in the media, being on the front cover of the Herald Sun, being attacked, I mean that’s so much fun.

Wolstencroft’s own productions have featured Nazi sympathisers and had Nazi themes. For example, his latest film still in production, the Debt Collector (the name itself, depending on the context, is an antisemitic canard). The film features a Nazi:

The film is made by Ontological Pictures and lists the Melbourne Underground Film Festival as its offical website.

There is an extended monologue praising Nazis in Pearls Before Swine 1999 delivered Boyd Rice. It begins:

The reason we should admire the Nazis is simple…

He seems to not adhere to the “show don’t tell” school of film making.

The Beautiful and Damned (2010) wasa modern adaption of a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Wolstencroft wrote about the anti-semticsm in the work:

My interest in Right Wing and Fascist politics did attract to me to Fitzgerald oddly enough. He spoke admiringly of Mussolini in an interview I read and never lived to see the major human rights atrocities of fascism. So, much like say Lawrence, Eliot, Pound or Yeats I detect a reactionary Right Wing vein in Fitzgerald. This can also be applied to Fitzgerald’s alleged anti Semitism. I naturally left the reference intact from the book in the film. Though it is a minor issue in The Damned and I did it so as to remain true to the novel and the Bloekman character. I think Anthony’s anti Semitism shows his weakness at that moment and that overall I find Fitzgerald is not really a racist or anti-semite. Though he has some Southern sensibilities, I would suggest…

A lot of the thoughts come from my study of Martin Heidegger. A major figure in 20th century thought and the most important philosopher of our epoch, in my humble opinion.

Surprise, surprise Martin Heidegger was a member of the Nazi Party. It’s interesting that he left the anti-Semitism in to “remain true to the novel” but changes the time period it was set by a century.

David Irving – Nazi pseudo-historian

Wolstencroft programmed a film and a phone hook up with David Irving the notorious holocaust denier for MUFF 2003. The film was a lecture by David Irving called In Search For Truth In History (originally made in 1993 to be shown in Australia in his absence after being refused entry a number of times previously) in the end it wasn’t screened because on the night the venue pulled out.

The film pushes holocaust denial at the time there was media attention around playing the film and enough concern that the The Jewish Community Council of Victoria took the Wolstencroft to VCAT.

The documentary, which runs for over an hour, is nothing but a rant-to-camera by Irving. He uses the occasion to condemn “our traditional enemies, you know who they are” (yes, indeed, Jews, of course). And he describes the accepted truth that the Nazi Germany regime murdered some 6 million Jews as both a “blood lie” and a myth which the “Jewish people have been dining out on for the last 50 years”.

Wolstencroft said, in a podcast with notorious American holocaust denier David Cole (who did the TV rounds in the 1990’s, socking people like an early Milo), that he chose Irving because he was a “shit stirrer” that both himself and Irving like to “rub people up the wrong way”. This description is very charitable description of a Nazi, who had his day in court to defend his “shit stirring” but instead got his arseserved by the High Court of Justice in 2000, (three years before Wolstencroft decided to play his propaganda diatribe):

The judge said he found that Irving was “an active Holocaust denier; that he was anti-Semitic and racist and that he associated with right-wing extremists who promoted neo-Nazism”.

At trial, they demonstrated that Irving had knowingly used falsified documents as sources, misattributed quotes, and willfully interpreted euphemisms for extermination (a common component of the orders issued by the Nazi high command) at face value…As much as he loves to, even David Irving now cannot deny that it is an established legal fact that he is a Holocaust-denying, Nazi-supporting, racist fuckhead.

The charges which I have found to be substantially true include the charges that Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist and that he associated with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.

A feature film was released about the case in 2016 called Denial. The case was a pivotal momentthat could have normalised holocaust denial if they lost. I recommend a watch.

In a radio interview only, last year, with alt-right personalities, Wolstencroft, explained his thinking leading up to the attempt to play Irving’s film. Wolstencroft says that he found Irving to be a “charmer” and that he was “interested” in holocaust denial himself. He also equivocated on his own position on holocaust denial, suggesting that the “film industry” is holding him back from speaking freely about his position on holocaust denial:

I have never made a comment whether I believe any of it [holocaust denial], and won’t make a comment on that because essentially you can’t in the film industry.“

Why does Wolstencroft associate with so many holocaust deniers and share platforms which push holocaust denial and anti-semitism? Why did he make a platform for holocaust denial? Why does he celebrate Nazism in his films? And why does he equivocate on his own position?

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“MUFF acknowledges the financial assistance of the Australian Film Commission” from 2003 Program

“Every OTHER major/indy film fest in Oz gets Gov Funding even dear ol Monsterfest. Nearly 20 years of MUFF cost to tax payer – ZERO” From a post 2017

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IMPORTANT – FILM FRIENDS PLS READ. This post was made by the founder and festival director of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival. After reading this, I will, of course, no longer be supporting MUFF. I strongly encourage all of you to join me. Please spread the word. pic.twitter.com/KHYZouJgRh